


Hekura

by Lycianthara



Category: American Folklore, Indigenous Folklore, Science - Fandom, South American Myth, South American folklore
Genre: Birds, Curses, Ecology, Gen, Other, Weird Biology, bird spirits, mild body horror, outbreak, spores, stone people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8569390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lycianthara/pseuds/Lycianthara
Summary: The forest is dying, and the Hekura will have their due.





	

It was warm, and wet. It was squishy, and malleable. Sometimes, my legs would hit these harsh, immovable objects. Sometimes they were round, sometimes they had spiky ends. It was always dark, the light that reached my eyes never had much color to it. It seemed almost like gold, if at all. One day, I had rocketed through the water, out into a blinding bright light, and everything was bright and pockmarked with blue and yellow and red. I was blue and red. I screamed a lot. There was a noise, like a bird tweeting, like the heartbeat in my chest. Then the beep became a woodpecker instead of a parrot. There was loud noises, and then it was quiet. It smelled like rot.

I had just gotten my diploma, after a long agonizing five years in high school. The sun glittered through the leaves overhead, birds singing and tweeting in the trees. A cacophony of sound that somehow made a song so godly. Muddy water slushed across my boots, sun glinting, shining bright with the black wax finish. The laces stayed fixed up on my knees, ensuring the boots stayed on my feet instead of stuck in the mud. A skin tight wetsuit, bright firetruck red with orchid purple racer lines, clung to my body, a thin barrier between me and a civilization-collapsing infection. Shielding my face, blurring my vision with the slight plated assembly, a piece of plexiglass, splattered with mist and mud. Sealed like a suction cup, the neck of my suit reached up and down to cover my head, shaved clean. It stuck like superglue to the edges of the glass, impenetrable. So they say. 

Tank of air on my back, like the old scuba divers, I was a man on a mission. Traipsing through a jungle, empty of predators, but full of microscopic dangers. Test tubes, plastic, unbreakable, strapped to each limb and in pockets across my chest. Empty, full, clearly labeled with species and location. Pollen, seeds, spores, leaves, stems, roots, mushroom heads, I had it all. All but one. The eggs of a Scale-crested pygmy tyrant.  
This was the species responsible for the outbreak, so they say. 

 

It’s juveniles had been taken into the USA several years prior. The bird was held sacred by the Yanomami tribal peoples. As per usual, rich white people claimed the birds were exotic and perfect for their daughters to flaunt at their private schools. That was until the birds began to die spontaneously. Usually it was the parent or child who would find the bird, and attempt to handle it. The bird was dead, for certain, but when the corpses were cut open, the bird was not as would be expected. Instead of their major internal organs, were infinite empty spaces. Many veterinarians lost their tools in such exams. Then, one day, all of the corpses suddenly burst. Not into flames, or a flurry of feathers, but into spores. Tiny, microscopic spores. Spores that when they came into contact with human skin or openings in the body, multiplied rapidly. Each person slowly became a stone cold statue, their very insides reduced to spores. In time, whole cities fell. 

 

The sensible moved out into the country, but when the birds escaped and bore eggs, these small communities fell too. Many tried to exterminate the birds, using sealed chambers or distant firing. No matter. The spores would reach them anyway. Food is no longer ingested, it is a nutritional slurry mixed by scientists very carefully. Human life is on the brink of extinction. Religions are scattered, and have largely died out. But the Yanomami, and all their descendants, hang on to the old beliefs.

 

My mother was the daughter of a Yanomami woman. My grandmother had been the first wife to a very powerful tribe leader. She bore pride in herself, her duties, and in her children. She gave birth to many sons, but her daughter, my mother, was the oldest. When she was young, her and my grandmother went out to fish. The river had gone low for the season, but the fish were still plentiful, and easy to catch. My mothers swears this is the truth, that on that day she saw a hekura, a spirit. The shapuri ritual the shamans used to speak with the hekura was forbidden to the women, but she swears she saw one. I never believed her. The hekura do not exist, they are merely imaginary things my people use to explain science. 

 

According to my mother, the hekura she saw whispered to her before it took the form of a pygmy tyrant. She said it whispered that the hekura would have vengeance for the forest. I do not believe her. The hekura do not exist. 

Amazingly enough, stepping into the lab was more awkward than usual. Usually I have my samples taken from me, my vest incinerated, my suit chopped to bits and then incinerated, and everything else on my person irradiated for several hours. But as I was being forcibly undressed by the lab safety personnel, I had a goose penis shoved in front of my face. Blabbering on about corkscrews, my colleague was arguing with our assitant over why geese and ducks had penises, but other birds only had cloaca. Not the most important thing to be talking about when your compound was comprised of only about 50 human beings.

 

I don’t remember much after that moment, nearly being blinded by a goose penis. Because immediately after, the contamination alarms went off. The security guard next to me screamed in agony as spores clawed their way through his flesh, down into his bones. The other guard yelled and shot him, their trigger finger running wild, bullets ricocheting into the lab, hitting my colleague and assistant. The guard looked at me, and put the gun against their head. Goodbye. 

 

I alone remained. A series of loud bangs in the distance sounded, the bombs had begun to go off. The compound was compromised, my suit was contaminated. I’m contaminated. 

She was right. My mother was right. The hekura caused this. The hekura are real. I know. I know because when I left the compound, contaminated, compromised, I saw it. I saw the hekura. It whispered to me. It whispered, that it was done.


End file.
